New York I: Singularity.

Captain America:  "You got heart, kid. Where are you from?"
Spider-Man:  "Queens."
Captain America:  "Brooklyn!"

Captain American: Civil War

On Monday morning, Karli and I are leaving for a nine day vacation in New York - I haven't been to the city that never sleeps just as a tourist for about 30 years, and Karli has never been, so we're both really looking forward to the trip.

At the start of the planning process, Karli decided that she wanted to get more of a physical understanding of where things were in relation to each other, so I printed out a large map of south Manhattan, which she put on a cork board and proceeded to annotate with push pins indicating sightseeing destinations, dining locations, and shopping opportunities. We've since transferred the results to an iOS app* for the trip, but Karli's push pin planning process was the perfect starting point - it gave us a feel for locations and combined opportunities that we would never have gotten from an LCD screen.

If you look at the resulting map, there's a lonely unlabelled black pin in Brooklyn, just at the end of the Manhattan Bridge in the fashionable DUMBO** neighbourhood.  It's not so much a destination as a memorial: that pin marks the location of Singularity and Co., a Kickstarter™-funded science fiction bookstore that opened its doors in 2012 - and closed them at some point in the last year or so, as far as I can tell. Their Facebook™ page confidently says that they're open right now, but Yelp reports them as permanently closed (as do some Facebook™ comments), and their online shop has gone dark.

 

It always makes me sad when I see that a bookstore has gone under, especially a science fiction bookstore. I realize that the future will be digital, which makes Singularity and Co.'s original Kickstarter™ mandate of converting lost texts a commendable one, but like a fan of vinyl albums, I can't let go of my attachment to the physical media - and physical bookstores. The majority of my book shopping is for older books - for me, the yellow-paged paperbacks from the 50s and 60s, with their classic covers and their lurid teasers*** represent science fiction and fantasy as I first discovered it, and because of that I treasure the older books in my collection.

Our final planning list has a pretty good selection of New York bookstores that will undoubtedly provide me with a wide selection of genre shopping , but I'm disappointed that Singularity and Co. isn't one of them. However, I haven't completely given up hope. I'm hoping that, as with Mark Twain, the reports of their death are greatly exaggerated. We'll probably be crossing the Brooklyn Bridge regardless, and once there, it's only a short detour to just check on that DUMBO storefront location - as they say, hope springs eternal, and that pin is still in the map.

- Sid

* An unpaid product endorsement: if you're going to New York and want to plan your trip in a format that you can access offline, I strongly recommend the New York Travel Guide and Offline City Map app from Ulmon. It's done everything we wanted and needed for planning our trip, and it was free.

** Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass - no, really.

*** I could probably do a blog posting just on classic science fiction and fantasy teaser lines and their complete reliance on exclamation points:
"Trapped in the graveyard of lost spaceships!"
"Duel of the Cosmic Magicians!"
"The Galaxy Master - planets and women were his pawns!"
"Cosmic peril in a lost world!"

Star Trek III: "Tiberius, you kidding me? That's the worst!"

I'd like to take a moment and recognize Chris Pine for apparently still being able to enjoy a full and rewarding career as an actor after having successfully played the iconic role of Captain Jame T. Kirk in not one, not two, but three Star Trek reboot films.

Bravo, sir, bravo - and good luck.  My advice is to stay away from Star Trek cruises and invitations to shopping mall openings for as long as your bank account lets you.  (But don't be distant or critical, the fans hate that.)

- Sid

Star Trek II: "Engage!"

 

I was very clear about what to expect. Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to be an utter failure and I would be on my way back to England within a few months. I could make some money for the first time in my life, get a suntan and go home.

- Patrick Stewart

Today, without any real fanfare, Star Trek: The Next Generation celebrated its 30th birthday. 

As I've discussed in other blog postings, ST:TNG is my favourite part of the Star Trek franchise - not always perfect, almost nothing is, but with an excellent record of thought-provoking and watchable stories over the course of its seven year run on television, and its four movies.

The Next Generation was my Star Trek:  I'd seen all the episodes of the original series, but by 1987 they were as much a part of history as World War II, and as such had become one of the pillars of science fiction fandom.  Because of that position, you didn't really have a choice about liking those episodes - it was all we had to hold up against The Six Million Dollar Man and Buck Rogers.

The Next Generation offered a return to the kind of thoughtful science fiction that was Star Trek at its best, at a time when the franchise was experiencing serious fatigue issues. The show's creators were faced with a unique challenge:  to take an existing concept of the future, and imagine what its future might be, while remaining faithful to the foundations of the original series - in other words, to boldly go where Gene Roddenberry* had already gone in 1966, but better.

The result was a surprising success that clearly demonstrated the durability of the original premise, revived the franchise, gave us a believable future for the Federation, and permanently added the phrase "the next generation" ** to the list of cultural clichés.

Oddly enough, in spite of my affection for ST:TNG, it's been a very long time since I've actually watched any of the episodes. As far as I know, The Next Generation is on Netflix™ - maybe it's time to revisit the series and the entertaining selection of dated 80s hairdos offered by the different cast members.  (With the exception of Jean-Luc Picard, of course - being bald is always fashionable.)

- Sid

* Different sources offer very different views of the benefits and drawbacks of Gene Roddenberry's influence on the first two or three seasons of The Next Generation before his death in 1991. However, it may not be a coincidence that, in my opinion, it wasn't until the third season that the show really found itself.

** Not to mention "Make it so, number one.", "Engage!" and "Shut up, Wesley!".